STRUCTURING PRIMITIVES FOR A DICTIONARY OF ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP DATA SCHEMAS

The data dictionary contains the description of all types of data prod uced, managed, exchanged, and maintained in an organization. Data desc riptions (very often hundreds of schemas) should be organized in such a way to allow all the users of the information system to understand t he meaning of data and their relationships. In this paper, a new set o f structuring primitives is presented for a dictionary of entity relat ionship data schemas. The formal properties of such structuring primit ives are investigated and the feasibility of their usage is shown by p roviding a methodology for dictionary design.